EPTThe most important things most commentators like to mention right now is the fact that a zerg feels less strong when a zerg has the same amount of bases then their opponent does. Zerg should be always one base ahead. Well that leeds to the first problem that zergs have in general. Zerg can produce everything with at least three resources instead of two – we always need the larva the minerals and the gas-count as well as enough supply. „Why is that a big problem?“ you might ask. Well the reason is that we have to decide how we spent our larva and what we need to build right at this moment. Watching a strong zerg player you may discover that he wont build much units in the early game. Instead he does produce more and more drones. „What makes such a playstyle strong?“ should be a question that we have to discuss. Well at first the game is based on economy the more economy you have running the more resources you can earn and the faster you can reach a strong unit count. But it makes you prone to early aggression and timing pushes. It also leads indirectly into improving your prediction making skills because you have to know how far you can go with just producing drones and when its time to make units and how many to hold off our opponents attacks. With proper micro you can handle with a lot more units then you can by just attacking and not controlling our units at all but there is a limit. So you have to make sure to find a balance that gives you an economic lead and still gives you enough safety not to fall by a single mistake. One more thing to say is that zerg is not a race that forgives mistakes. In fact it is very hard as a zerg to come back from a disadvantage.
The things that make a good macro player are mechanics. The first and most important mechanic is the attempt not to have any unspent resources or larva. If you don’t have any unspent resources you cant have less then our opponent. But it also matters if you can constantly spent your larva and resources or if you spent it all at once. Its easily explained if you imagine you have like 3 unspent larva and enough minerals to produce 5 drones of course you are still efficient producing 3 drones but it would be much more efficient if
you had produced 2 drones earlier so they could mine like 5 seconds earlier. Another thing that makes zerg difficult is that you cant constantly produce worker and army. Instead you have to aim producing workers until an fight is coming and then you produce enough units to barely win it and focus again on economy. Every time you survive a fight without real looses you get ahead in economy. Because as Day9 said once „If you are a head get more ahead!“. The meaning of this is to decide the game with the least risks. And its always saver to build up a huge lead in economy then to attack. Because an attacks outcome is influenced by so many factors.
2.1 Expanding:
The timing on expansions is very important for the flow of the game. If you expand to early you may loose it or you have less army to fight with. On the other side a late expansion can set you far behind in economy. In general two rules should be mentioned for successful timings on expansions. Whenever you invested a lot in army and you can hold map control you can expand freely. But there are also rules that make expansion-timings based on your opponents expanding style and gametimes. My advice is to expand around every four ingame minutes that passed. That means you should take your third around 12 minuites and your fourth around 16 minutes. The first expansion should always be built until you reach 20-23 supply. The earlier the better. In general its really common to set up at least a bit of static defence just to feel save. Responding to several builds is discussed in the matchup part.
